As before, no profanity (this name will appear on the door for potential adopters to marvel at -- keep it family friendly). Submit your ideas and cast your votesbefore the deadline of Friday, March 6th at noon Pacific. Winners will receive a priceless warm & fuzzy feeling, a bobblehead, and may even save the world.

Kitty is nearly 11 years old domestic medium hair, about 6lbs. She was surrendered last year because her owner developed allergies. She is shy, and if adopted, she would probably hide for the first few weeks but will eventually come out of her shell. She is a lovely, sweet cat, and will be very grateful for a second chance at a happy home life and will thank you with lots of cuddles and purrs.

London is an adorable male, 2 year old Chihuahua / Shih Tzu Mix. He came to BARC from the city shelter, where he was surrendered by his person. Right now he is understandably scared. He needs a patient person willing to give him the time and space to adjust to his new surroundings until he feels more secure. He guards his space and his food from people he doesn't know. He should not be in a home with children.

We're aiming to do this every month at cities across the U.S. If you've got an SPCA or other animal shelter in your hometown that you'd like to see featured on TheCuteList, message Erik.

--The mission of TheCuteList is to be a 24-7 competition for the cutest things on the Internet, all of which are submitted and ranked by the site's users.

The mission of Brooklyn Animal Resource Coalition is to provide safe haven for homeless animals and find permanent, loving homes for these animals. The animals in our care receive quality food, shelter, and medical attention. We meet the needs of homeless animals through the assistance of dedicated volunteers, revenues generated from the success of our pet supply business, and from private donations. Brooklyn Animal Resource Coalition (BARC) is a 501c3 not-for-profit, no-kill, privately funded animal shelter, located in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Established in 1987, BARC receives no subsides from the city, state, or federal government.You can donate directly to BARC here.

Here we are over three years later and xkcd has ascended to its rightful place in geek culture (some sort of demigod status once reserved for the likes of Hercules). So when it came time to consider new vendors for selling our reddit merch, guess who was high on the list. They certainly had the distribution experience. Plus, the alien has always had a bit of a crush on them.

So we're proud to announce that reddit shirts are now for sale on the xkcd store*. The first shirt for sale is our most popular design to date (modeled by a long-time redditor, rocket scientist, and bad mofo, as the sunglasses would suggest). Buy the 8-bit reddit alien shirt and you'll not only be supporting reddit, but also xkcd -- oh, and you'll be looking super fab, too.

We're a week into our partnership with Destructoid and our lovechild is off to a great start. You see, gaming.reddit got a new, more robotic face:reddit.destructoid.com. Same site (and same look if you're coming through reddit) but opened up to a broader gaming community. There were understandable concerns about content being skewed toward destructoid, but so far they've proven unfounded. Dtoiders are just as brand agnostic about whence good content comes as the reddit community.

The ad to the right will be running throughout the reddit network in the coming weeks. We know a number of you use adblock, so think of this as your chance to see what you're missing.

There are a few things we can learn from the Destructoid community -- chiefly, their ability to coerce their users to send them random crap (the most random of which earns them a free video game of their choice).

And if you've been paying attention on Destructoid, you'll notice they're sporting a new look with a prominent reddit link in the navbar. Very nice. The alien is pleased and is expecting your robot to be home in time for dinner and cuddles, followed by some Left4Dead.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

After hitting #1 on paid news apps, iReddit is working its way up the top 100 list. Currently sitting at #85, our alien has its eyes on dethroning Fish Tycoon, among others, on its push to the top.

And as proud as we are of our knock-off iPhone commercial, we know iReddit is where it is because of you. Thank you for continuing to support us, whether it's just by visiting the site or downloading our app (and showing it off to all your covetous friends).

The 280north team built a splendid product and reviews are flooding in to confirm that:

from TUAWDon't tell the rest of the TUAW team -- many of whom were clamoring to post about iReddit -- but I'd never used reddit.com in any serious fashion until I got in on the iReddit beta. I'm now a frequent reader ... at least on my iPhone. The app itself is much like the website in layout. It's also elegant, responsive and heart-warmingly cute, the cuteness due in large part to the reddit mascot checking the time and tapping its toes while pages load. I'm quite serious when I say that it's one of the best "loading screens" I've ever had the pleasure of using.

And if that's not enough, we tested the awesomeness of you, the reddit community, by giving away a bobblehead to the first 5 redditors who emailed a photo of the following:

The iReddit application running

That day's newspaper with date showing and doodle of the reddit alien

A spoon (any kind will do)

Fun fact: We have another bobblehead contest running right now that only requires 3 hamsters, 1 Richard Stallman, and a receipt from purchasing our 8-bit reddit alien shirt @ xkcd.

Well, we got a bunch of submissions. Not all of them could be bobblehead winners (non-bobbling consolation prizes have been awarded) but they're all winners for such impressive acts of spoon. Behold!

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Jason donated today's shirt to our FEEDaNEED project. We quickly put together something on CafePress that featured all of our participating non-profits on the front and a massive list of our awesome partners (and their respective prizes) on the back. It's not going to win any fashion shows, but it does have one of the highest text-to-shirt ratios is apparel history.

Erik has an update about FaN.org coming shortly, but in the meantime, let's all tune in and watch Jason talk about donating his chest to the cause.

After three years of stuffing shirts into mailers, I thought it was time I obsoleted myself. We've been pleased with the Startup Schwag service and thought we'd give them a try (yes, we get a monthly schwag bag of web 2.0 gear that ends up getting awarded to the winners of our StarCraft matches).

Instead of including a paper note like we used to, a similar form-letter gets sent once you make a purchase:

Thanks. Despite the fact that this is one of those form letters, we really do mean it.

For the first three years of reddit, I stuffed all of our shirt orders myself. As we’ve grown, my hands have grown tired of stuffing shirts and long for the time they spend frolicking on a keyboard. After watching Startup Schwag deliver high quality product with equally impressive customer service, I’ve asked them to handle our order fulfillment.

You already make reddit work by using it, but now you’ve gone a step further and bought a shirt--risking the envy of all your peers.If you’re ever not satisfied with reddit, please let us know why (feedback@reddit.com). Likewise, if you’re not satisfied with your shirt, please contact Startup Schwag support (support@startupschwag.com ) or return it within 30 days to the address below for a full refund or exchange (please indicate). However, if you are satisfied with your shirt, please wear it every single day.

On behalf of the team, thanks again,Alexis Ohanianreddit co-founder

Well, we just got our first response and I couldn't have asked for a better one:

Best email I've ever gotten after making a purchase. Thank you for the service you provide. [redacted]

With about 5 million of you visiting the site a month, keeping the site feeling small is certainly a challenge (as I think about all the feedback emails I have to reply to) but these days it matters more than ever before. Thanks to all of you who have ever bought anything from reddit as well as those of you who've only visited. We're happy to serve you.

Unless you're a spammer, then you can die in a fire.

Teaser: the reddit store has another big update coming later this week.

Q: In recent years, there has been an influx of fast moving zombiesover the traditional slow shambling type. Do you prefer one type overthe other, and why?- NakedTonyDanza

John Joseph Adams: I prefer the slow zombie, and not just because of tradition. There's something just much more satisfying about the dread caused my the slow shambling hordes overtaking you with sheer, single-minded persistence.

There's no denying that the fast zombie is much more terrifying, but of the two varieties, I have to say that they seem much less realistic. I mean, if I'm going to suspend my disbelief and accept, for the moment, that the dead can reanimate, and when they do, they hunger for human flesh, then the idea that they'd move slowly makes sense to me. After all, they're dead, they're rotting, their muscle tone probably isn't what it used to be. I don't see why they would suddenly become *super fast,* especially not if the supposed cause of the zombism is a *virus*. Of course, if we're talking purely supernatural reanimation, anything goes, really.

Q: Zombie themed movies and literary works have traditionally beenused to express social commentary (corporate corruption, governmentineptitude, lack of social cohesion, etc).

Do you believe this commentary is an integral part of the genre? Ifso, do you believe a work lacking this commentary could make yourpersonal top-10 list?- reallythateasy

JJA: I don't know that I'd say it's *integral,* but I'd say in most cases it adds some depth to stories that would otherwise be pretty simple. Of course, when you're talking zombies and survival horror, simple works pretty well. So, no, I don't think it's integral, and in some cases, I think it probably even does more harm than good. I think the later Romero films suffer from that a bit, like after getting all this acclaim for the first two including all the social commentary, he felt like he had to keep that going, and so it feels more forced in the later films.

Q: What intrigues you about Zombies or the idea of a Zombie Apocalypse?- robobama

JJA: Well, first of all, I'm just plain intrigued by apocalypses--my first anthology, Wastelands, was all about post-apocalyptic fiction. My interest in that sub-genre stems from a couple video games I played years ago--first, an old game called Wasteland (from which I got my title), and later, Fallout & Fallout 2. After playing those, and after getting interested in science fiction reading, I sought out books and stories on that topic. Eventually I wrote an article about it, which involved a lot of research, and in the writing of that, I became an expert of sorts, expert enough, at least, to edit an anthology on the subject.As for zombies--zombies are an extension of that. Zombie fiction and post-apocalyptic fiction are in many ways the same sub-genre, except that in zombie fiction the cause of the apocalypse is, well, *zombies*. But I think the reason we're drawn to a monster like the zombie so much is that in the zombie we see ourselves, because, well, they *are* us--just dead, rotting versions of us. And I think the zombie allows characters to experience a lot of personal turmoil as they're forced to confront their friends and neighbors who suddenly want to devour their flesh. So zombies afford the writer many opportunities for drama that are almost exclusive to that type of fiction.

Q: Some of the undead featured in the stories published in "The LivingDead" have qualities that don't conform to the typical "Romero" styleof modern zombie (e.g., characters in The Skull Faced Boy). Aside frombeing undead, what quality would you say then is the sine qua non ofbeing a zombie, if there is one?- Zom_B

JJA: I'm not sure if there's any one characteristic. They're almost always reanimated corpses, but that's not always the case (as in many voodoo zombie stories). They're usually somewhat mindless, but not always. They usually hunger after human flesh, except when they don't.

I think the trouble with pinning a single characteristic down is that we've taken the term zombie and applied it to other things in other contexts, and that's expanded the scope of what can be considered a zombie.

Some folks, I know, are zombie purists, and so would rather I had confined my definition to the Romero-style zombie, but I wanted to showcase the variety that zombie stories have to offer. I think that all of the zombies in the book are clearly zombies of a sort, in one way or another. I kind of wanted to explore the boundaries of the term.

Q: What fortifications and weaponry would you use in the event of azombie apocalypse?- insert_name_here

JJA: I think your most important weapon is a good melee weapon you're comfortable with. I'd go with an aluminum baseball bat. I like the bat because it's familiar; I've never swung a bat at a person's head before, but I have swung a bat many times, and I understand how I would go about it. Other blunt objects can work too, but ultimately most other things are not weighted properly for swinging, as a bat is. Crowbar might be handy--it'll pack a wollop, and you can use it for other things, like prying open doors or whatever--but it's unwieldy, and, again, it's probably not familiar to you as a weapon. Something like a machete might be tempting, but you've probably never swung one of those either; it's actually really easy to hurt yourself with a blade like that if you don't know what you're doing. Plus, it could get stuck in a zombie skull or something, and then you're fucked.

I'm not saying don't take a gun; do take one, definitely, but don't rely on it as your primary weapon. Guns are another thing that seem like a good idea because you can keep your distance, but if you don't know how to use it, it won't be very effective. If you can only take on gun, and you have your choice of anything, go for something like a shotgun. It's the easiest weapon for an unskilled person to use and hit his target, unless you think you'd have trouble with the kick, in which case, a rifle might be a better bet.

As for fortifications, I love the idea Robert Kirkman explores in The Walking Dead comic--holing up in a prison. Of course, you need to clean the place out, which can be tricky, but it's basically a fortress designed to keep people in, but equally effective at keeping people (or zombies) out.

Ultimately, I'd try to get in touch with my brother-in-law, who is in Army special forces, because he could definitely kick some zombie ass, and would know how to fortify the shit out of a dwelling, I bet.

JJA: Because humans are always writing the movies. If zombies ever write movies, they'll probably win. But another reason the zombies never win is because they can't *really* win. If them winning means the total defeat of the human race, what would they eat? Ultimately, they'd all starve or un-animate or whatever zombies who can't get any human flesh do, and thus we all lose. So the best zombies can hope for is a draw, I think.

Q: Have you played Left 4 Dead, and if you have, how'd you like it?- daggity

JJA: I have played it, and it's awesome. It does have fast zombies, rather than slow zombies, but that does make sense for a video game, after all. But it's also got some other zombie-like monster things that bear very little resemblance to anything traditionally called a zombie. So zombie purists might have some problems with it. But as a first person shooter, it's gold. The teamwork aspect of it is really innovative, and the multiplayer online play just makes the game exponentially more fun, especially when you can get all four characters being run by actual humans.

The only real problem with it, to me, is that there's not really any story in any of the four scenarios--it's just get from safehouse to safehouse and survive--but it's still a lot of fun.

--Coming up next for John Joseph Adams, in May, is a new anthology called Federations, which contains stories set in interstellar societies. It's a mix of reprints and originals, featuring stories by Orson Scott Card, Lois McMaster Bujold, Robert Silverberg, Alan Dean Foster, Allen Steele, and many more. In August, his mammoth anthology of vampire fiction, By Blood We Live, is scheduled to be published. It's a reprint anthology that will include the best vampire fiction of the last 30 years or so, including work by Stephen King, Harry Turtledove, Neil Gaiman, Joe Hill, and many more. And in September, Night Shade Books will publish his as-yet-unnamed Sherlock Holmes anthology, which will include stories of both mystery and the fantastic, involving the great detective. You can keep up with John and all these interesting projects at johnjosephadams.com.

Tue, Aug 5, 2008 at 5:44 PMAre you guys planning on busting out a Reddit iphone app? Granted, the site is already in pretty iphone-friendly list format, but I could see it being pretty cool.

This resurrected visions of a shake-able reddit iPhone app to cure away-from-the-computer-ennui once and for all.

Thanks to some fantastic users (being open-source probably also didn't hurt) reddit already has a pair of iPhone apps. The first was developed by Joseph Pintozzi as a contribution to the open-source project -- it's aptly called open source reddit and is free. Shortly after that was released, the guys at 3Cube Technologies released Satellite at $4.99 now just $.99. We were still in the middle of turning a nifty idea into a working app; hard to do with a company of just 6.5 employees and a mountain of other, more pressing development.

Enter 280North to save the day. We exchanged a few emails discussing the app and it wasn't long before they walked into the office with a working demo.

We decided $1.99 was a reasonable price for this app; it will reward 280North for their great work and help us cover a few more servers. There's a free, ad-supported version coming, but we thought $1.99 was a price many of you would be willing to pay to never see advertising.

Speaking of advertising, here's a commercial you won't see on TV anytime soon.

Our friends over at BaconFreak.com have agreed to supply some Maple Bacon Pancake Mix to the highest voted text for the highest voted announcement. Submit your wordplay HERE.

This mix provided by BaconFreak.com is quite a reward for the bacon lover. It's described elegantly:

Imagine this, pancakes cooked to your absolute perfection with giant, gargantuan globs of sweet maple, I mean the real stuff, actual chucks of authentic maple that melt into the pancakes as you cook them topped off with the savory flavor of Boss Hog's Hickory Smoked Bacon!

The winner will be chosen at 12pm ET on Wednesday, February 18th. There is also a prize for the first entry to incorporate the secret "mystery concept" in their submission.

We've long been fans of Destructoid, a gaming community with a similar fondness for its site's mascot -- a proper robot (it should be noted that although the reddit alien may have robot-like qualities, we believe it's organic, but its technology could simply be too advanced beyond our own).

Today, we're announcing the relaunch of gaming.reddit, a gamer community started shortly after we started growing new reddits. You'll still be able to access it through the old domain, but it's also now available via http://reddit.Destructoid.com with a Destructoid-esque interface. It's not unlike our earlier reddit.Independent.co.uk, only there are a few more stories about video games.

And with that, I extend a hearty welcome and warm - only slightly sweaty - controller to the Destructoid community (see their announcement). May you find this reddit a great way to share and discover the latest news about Gordon Freeman, Diablo III's unicorns, and anything that lets you shoot/hack/incinerate zombies.

I know at least one redditor wouldn't have a PhD to be working on right now if it weren't for ol' Chuck - she'd just be the weirdo spending 6 years wandering around Harvard muttering something about "evolutionary biology."

So take some time away from writing your Darwin Claus cards and join us to say Happy Birthday to one of the world's most influential scientists.

I've never played it, but the economy of EVE Online is supposed to be really complex and deep.

OK, Professor flashgasoline, so that's not exactly enough to get a first draft of the syllabus going. But you won, so we're going to draft that formal letter to Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau. It just so happens that none of us at team reddit have played much EVE, either.

That headline is a total lie, but there was a reddit shoutout in a recent issue of MIT's The Tech by Campus Life editor, Charles Lin.

Sweet, I am out of the plane. Damn this water is really, really cold. I wonder how long until I get the hypothermia. Screw the FAA, I can check that shit right now! Okay, iPhone out. Going to Google. Wait — better update my Twitter, my guild is going to be so geeked out when they hear about this. “Crash landed plane in Hudson, gtg, being rescued. CU at Naxx tonight 7 p.m. EST k l8r.” Gotta do my Facebook status next. Oh wait. Dude, I could totally be like the first person to post this on Reddit. That’s going to be so much karma. Man, today’s like the best day ever.

Steve and I grew up in the D.C. metro area, Virginia and Maryland, respectively. One doesn't grow up around there without making a number of journeys to D.C. for visits to the Smithsonian - it's like an orgy of learning.

Thursday, February 05, 2009

Last week we asked the cute-lovers of TheCuteList to rename this orphaned cat at the SF SPCA.

The winning name (in case the image wasn't enough of a giveaway) is Jellybean. We suspect it's only a matter of time now before this lovely black kitteh ends up in someone's home, though I have no reason to believe she tastes like licorice.

Norimachebeer, the winning redditor, will be receiving a bobblehead for the suggestion. And with some luck, Jellybean will be winning a home with that snazzy new name.

If you've ever led a squad of stimmed marines, watched a zergling rush eviscerate a base, or cackled as a swarming fleet of carriers obliterated your opponent -- it's time to enroll at UC Berkeley.

They're offering a course in Starcraft. And it's not a joke. Alan Feng (pictured here, pwning n00bz) is the man responsible for it and as soon as the class was announced, Brawndo arranged to be there for day 1. Evidently, it's the stimulant of choice if you want any chance of beating those highly-touted Korean champions.

As an office with a long history of playing StarCraft during our (extended) lunch breaks, we at reddit were thrilled to hear about the developments on the other side of the Bay.

Oh, and we'll also send a formal letter on your behalf to Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau requesting this class become a part of the UC Berkeley curriculum. We'll also try bribing him with a case of BRAWNDO.

We've only got 2 weeks remaining with FEEDaNEED and the project's success has really impressed us. In a little over a month we've received a tremendous amount of attention, a ton of new partners, and most importantly, lots of volunteers (over 750 and still growing). Thank you.

Presently, we've got 3,100+ hours of volunteer time pledged and growing -- at the California minimum wage ($8.00 per hour) that alone is over $24,800 worth of donated work. But considering the high level of skill found in our volunteers, that number is about as conservative as possible.

We're still taking volunteers, but with less than two weeks until the deadline, we're not going to be able to place you in time to win some awesome prizes. But we're not stopping FEEDaNEED. In fact, we've got an exciting announcement to come.

Erik and I have been keeping track of shoutouts here -- thank you for generating so much attention and let me know if we missed your blog entry, tweet, or FEEDaNEED tattoo.

And finally, our partners list has grown quite nicely, too. We've got some very awesome partners who've generously given to this project. The rest of this entry will be used to shower praise on them. Thank you, awesome partners.

Monday, February 02, 2009

After our first reddit awards contest, we prepared to send the winners some gold spray-painted bobbleheads. We were proud of ourselves both for the craftiness of the prize and for the extra appreciation people feel obligated to have when receiving homemade things.

Then Pete of Brawndo and Sex Panther fame made us an offer we couldn't refuse. We're sending the winners real, gold-plated bobbleheads thanks to CV Vacuum Platers, Inc. (note: their website looks the same way it probably did last century, but that's because they've been so busy kicking ass and gold-plating things). Bring on the gold standard. Ron Paul is dancing a jig somewhere.

If you're one of those lucky redditors, you'll be pleased to know the aliens survived their first two stages (with pics!). You've seen the originals before, but consider this the "before-bling" picture. Our mascots had to be decapitated and removed from their bases for proper plating.

The base coat is very important because it prepares the aliens for their awesome journey.

Then they go into the vacuum chamber, where our resident scientist, Dr. Chris Slowe, assures us the magic happens.

Then they get their metal undercoat. It gives them a T-1000-like appearance. Real gold comes next. Unless we come up with a way to bring this little metal army to life between now and the gold-plating.